Le Grande Museum

I love this painting, though it's small its fresh

and you can imagine what kind of day

it is. A cool breeze rushing through the trees.

Beautiful.

Daniel Szabo (hungary) only 14 years of age.

Though some may think I'm lame, I have always liked visiting the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff. I like to sit, and ponder and marvel in the paintings of old and new, particularly the brilliant Monet, one of my favourites. I like how quiet and still it is there, how appreciative most visitors are of the beauty and message in the paintings. This time around I looked at the rock formations and thought of how they are made, and how they can be used. I was amazed to find a rock formation from India that resembled roses. How amazing is that, how nature can emulate an idea and form from another natural form. I love nature. On exhibition there was the photographer of the year awards and the talent this year was amazing. I found myself drawn to the cute orangutans and baby animals. Just me being a girl i guess. But I was also drawn to the mystical mystery in the photo of a deer. It stands in a misty wood in the distance, it makes you want to follow it, see where it's going and what it looks like up close. That's the kind of pull I want from my next collection. The dark mystery that draws you in. You have to look and touch and wonder. That's me in a nut shell, so i hope to translate it to my work.

Perception Deception

Sam Rowley/ Veolia Environnement Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2009 

I'd bought a postcard at the museum because it was my favourite photograph. It was quite funny, but picturesque at the same time. Whilst sat watching tele staring at my mum's flowers in a vase, i recognised a very indiscreet similarity between the stags antlers and the flowers. The way the gladioli were placed in the vase with the random arrangement of close knit flowers at the bottom, it was almost a spitting image of them. Well that's what I thought anyway. So I went at it to create a combination of flower antlers and a drawing of the stags face. I think it turned out really well. Even if I do say so myself. The great thing is the juxtaposition of the flowers being soft and delicate being used as hard antlers that are used in protection. One similarity though is the way the both attract. Flowers attract bees with their beautiful vibrant colours and Stags attract the attention of the females by fighting each other with these antlers, and by the structure of them. The antlers also remind me of tree branches, another natural relation. The creation I made might work as an emblem or logo of a brand, my brand possibly. Something to think about.

Simply Nature

 I love these Ripples. It makes me immediately think of how I could use them 

in fashion design. The light reflection is also perfect, It could possibly be a print.

As noted before, I couldn't travel too far on my summer break, so found myself reveling in the simplest of things that I possibly took for granted previously. My trips to the beach, and along my regular bike trails is where i found a lot of amazing potential. It just takes some time sometimes, you have to kind of stop and wait and admire what's around you. I think in today we get wrapped up in getting to and from a place to do  a particular thing, our mind is occupied by that one thing. Always thinking. Tick tocking away like mechanical cogs in the engineering that is life. But. If for one minute, getting to work on time isn't filling our heads we allow ourselves to take in much more, we become more observant, relaxed, and calm. It's the kind of philosophy I'm thinking of taking on this year. A chillaxed sense of being. I think that creativity will flow better then, it will become more organic. I'm going to become organic. That's the plan anyway. I am not a machine. :)

J'aime Le Flora

 Gladioli

 The dinner flower, set at every table, they just brighten 

the mood and set a scene. These flowers were quite playful.

My grandmother's Hibiscus. This is it's third bloom

 since June!

Easter lilies.

 Wonderful Dior Collection. Just two of my very favourite.
These photo's were found on Style.com A/W 2010/11

Having always been attracted to flowers, like everywhere I go, taking photo's of them over the summer seemed easy. Everywhere I went, on my phone, my camera, it seemed it was a real concentration on flora. I'm not sure wether it is because of their conventional beauty, or me being female but I find them appealing. I got really interested in fashion designers using the influences from flowers, and found that my all time favourite John Galliano  had designed his whole collection for Dior based on a flower garden. Amazing!! They are definitely a grand source for inspiration. You could use the petals as ideas of layering, the colours as a beautiful colour palette, their silhouette in the form of draping. There are so many possibilities! 

Flowers in Fashion

I have always loved taking a natural inspiration for projects (as you can see from past posts) and I particularly like how flower forms inspire the fashion designer. Many designers can create beautiful silhouettes and colour palette's from the simplest of flowers, like the daisy for instance for Marc Jacobs. The examples above are from Junya Watanabe, a designer who loves to create in fabric manipulation and with texture and colour. It emulates if not exactly, petal forms and folds perfectly. I would absolutely love to experiment some more with fabric manipulations to become as great as Watanabe. I think my work would be just as inspiring if i took the same inventive imagination and figurative forms. The one image is of an unknown designer, and they have used a very clear idea by draping the fabrics very similarly, almost exactly as the flower from which it's inspiration has come. Intensely Inspiring, if I do say so myself :)

colour colour all around

Theoretically speaking I take my colour palette from the changing weather and stages of day. Twilight, dawn, sunsets, moonlit skies, starlight, and the blanket of blackness on a cloudy night. I always believe that a natural colour palette provides the greatest of inspiration. This summer I was proven that colour can come from anywhere. Unusually, the place to prove the colour theory was at a volkswagen show at Margham park. Amazing. Above I have provided you with the necessary inspiration to start your own colour palette. :) enjoi!!

illustration fascination

Minjae Lee is a Korean painter, only 19years old! His ethereal life like beauty's hide a dark and dangerous mood, quite the juxtapose to their beauty. I love his use of colour, where it is quite abstract in some examples, but more constrained and strict in others. His linear sharp ladies are surrounded by scatty doodles and floral representations. Absolutely beautiful!

Linn Olofsdotter has worked with many top brands as a graphical illustrator creating such things as album covers, magazine illustrations and even graphics on clothing such as Levi T--shirts. She has also helped brand television networks such as MTV. Her main focus today is on editorial fields such as fashion and advertising with La Perla being her main attribute. I particularly love this work for it's use of colour and how Olofsdotter has made the scene seem whimsical and light. It reads a very fresh and new vibe

Nikki Farquharson is a 24 year old freelance designer living in London. She has a great passion for colour, patterns and typography and has produced many books and featured in numerous magazines.She has also done such collaborations with Benefit Cosmetics, Fujifilm, Nike78 and many more. I love her use of mixing photographical images with pen and paper, and she demonstrates that she is unafraid of patterns and crazy forms and shapes, and that she definitely has a great eye for colour.




After looking at coolhunter for inspiration for this mighty blog of cool, I found some amazing illustrators that I found it to be only fitting that they were included in my very own library of cool. They feature similar  techniques and amazing skills. To be honest they were the reason that over the summer I got quite obsessed with illustrating, especially with different techniques. It makes sense to experiment in every way shape and form possible before choosing a media, look or silhouette. The same goes for what I intend to do with garment construction and designing. It's all about thinking outside of the box. Not to have a closed mind, and not to be afraid of many failed attempts before perfection is found. If at first you don't succeed try try try again!